Hearst

BranchOut’s story is a brutal lesson about building on someone else’s platform. After raising $49 million and growing to 33 million users, Facebook changed its viral channels leading BranchOut to starve. Now the “Linkedin Within Facebook” wants to throw in the towel.
Sources confirm that BranchOut is in discussions with several acquirers in the recruiting space for its… Read More

Apple today quietly launched a new feature for Newsstand, whereby publications by partner Hearst (covering their entire catalog) will now be available to subscribers days before they come to print, or other digital editions. Hearst’s library includes a number of top titles, including Car and Driver, Popular Mechanics, Esquire, Seventeen and Harper’s Bazaar among many others. Read More

Another milestone for old-school print magazines moving into a digital future: Cosmopolitan says that it now has 100,000 people paying to read the digital edition of its monthly fashion/beauty/lifestyle magazine. That puts publisher, Hearst, one step closer to a target set by president David Carey last November to rack up one million paying subscribers across all of its non-print editions… Read More

Social shopping site Kaboodle, which was acquired by Hearst Interactive Group in 2007 for $30 million or so, is trying its hand at social commerce with new community-driven flash sales site PopPicks.
PopPicks, which is members-only, partners with a retailer each week to feature a collection of products. The Kaboodle community is then invited to vote for the products they like best. After… Read More

Print publishers are in a tizzy over Apple’s new iPad because they hope to finally be able to charge for their digital editions. But in order to get people to pay for their magazine and newspaper apps, they are going to have to offer something different that readers cannot get at the newsstand or on the open Web. We’ve already seen plenty of prototypes from magazine publishers… Read More

The magazine industry is falling over itself over a new shiny object. It wants to remake its product for a new class of digital tablets with color screens and touch screens. Today, a group of big publishers—Condé Nast, Time Inc., News Corp. Hearst, and Meredith—announced a joint venture to create standards for digital magazines to be read on tablets, e-readers, Web phones, and… Read More

The problem with magazines is that they are so very expensive to produce. All those writers, editors, photographers, and designers cost money. Even original news sites require a lot of resources to run. That is why Hearst is taking a different approach with a new site launching today called LMK (Let Me Know). It brings in a river of news and photos on 2.3 million people and topics from… Read More

All I have to say to Hearst is “Good luck, bro.” The flatlining publisher, which produces magazines such as Popular Mechanics, Esquire and Cosmopolitan, has revealed that it’s working on an e-reader. The idea, of course, is to cut down the cost of creating a magazine—all that paper, ink, storage, delivery, gas, etc. adds up, especially in an environment when ad sales… Read More

Hearst Corporation unit UGO Entertainment has agreed to acquire 1UP.com, a property attracting a gamer audience along with its associated sites including GameVideos.com, MyCheats.com and GameTab.com. There had been rumors about a pending acquisition for a couple of weeks (more specifically, reported by Joystiq), but yesterday evening the company released the official news.
The acquisition deal… Read More

Hearst Corp. apparently didn’t find what it was looking for, as it has sold off its shares of Local.com, a search engine for local businesses, services and products. Hearst was thinking locally earlier this year when it made a private placement investment in Local.com, and had paid $6 million for its stake, obtaining a 22 percent stake in the company. But last week the company converted… Read More